Dear the young people

An open letter to the young people.

Dear the young people,

I speak to you today on behalf of the old people, and unapologetically. Yes, we use your slang words, your websites and your subculture. We appropriate and make our own all the fringe terms and ideas that you use to distinguish yourselves from us. Stop whining. This is a thing and we will keep doing it.

Yes, we will say IKR. Yes, we will put words like lulz and realz in our emailz (HA!) and our Whatsapp groupchats. We will refer to your friends as shorties and ask you what the 4-1-1 is. We will sound ridiculous, but mostly because YOU SOUND RIDICULOUS. When you use a reference around us we will ask about it and then use it to death. If you find a new app or website on the interwebz, a new game or quiz or filter, we will jump on that bandwagon so fast it will make you wish you were a Luddite. We will binge watch all your shows and talk with our friends about 13 Reasons Why Season 2 (spoiler alert, who cares?). We will wear ripped clothes and Vineyard Vines as we listen to Halsey on our Beats. We will talk about the Snapchat, and the Finsta and the Fortnite and the Collide and the Sling Kong. You will want to say "don't say that" and "please don't ever say that again" but when you try we will just point out that we are cool AF and you will cringe. Then we'll dab. Poorly.

We don't just do this so that we can motivate you to innovate new words and push counter-culture forward. We don't do this just because we want to be viewed as cool. We do this as petty revenge and we will continue to do so with our BFF's and our homies and whatnot. We do this to mock you -- co-opting what you think of as yours and turning it into something completely the opposite of cool. We will make it so that you just can't. Possibly, can't even! Next time you are a baby, maybe you'll sleep through the night and not pull our hair.

If you want to get back at us, start quoting Shakespeare, dressing reasonably and using proper grammar. That'll teach us.